Birmingham's Cumberland Law dean John Carroll will return to teaching

Veteran Cumberland Law School Dean John Carroll. (The Birmingham News file)

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- John Carroll will step down as dean of Cumberland School of Law next summer and return to teaching at the law school where he graduated and later led through its 50th anniversary at Samford University's campus.

"There is nothing mystical about my decision," Carroll, 68 and a new grandfather, said in a statement. "I have simply decided that it is time to take a step back and return full-time to my real love in legal education: teaching."

He will make the transition on June 30, 2013.

A U.S. Marine Corps flight officer on 200 missions during the Vietnam War, Carroll graduated from Cumberland in 1974. After serving as a civil rights lawyer, law professor and federal judge, he returned to Cumberland in 2001 as dean.

"John has lived an interesting life," said J. Bradley Creed, Samford provost and executive vice president. "His noteworthy background and experiences all prepared him for the capstone of an extraordinary career as dean of the Cumberland School of Law."

Carroll has taught classes at Cumberland in federal courts, complex litigation, mediation, evidence, trial practice and an online course in e-discovery and evidence.

Under Carroll's tenure as dean, the law school returned to an earlier focus on producing courtroom-ready lawyers. U.S. News and World Report ranked Cumberland's trial advocacy program fourth nationally in 2012, up from fifth in 2011.

Recently, Carroll has led an effort to update the curriculum to better prepare students for the ever-evolving practice of law.

"John Carroll has been a highly effective and successful dean," Creed said. "He has a remarkable ability to focus on the strategic initiatives that have been crucial for the law school's progress."

Cumberland, which was founded in Tennessee in 1847 and is the nation's 14th oldest law school, moved to the Samford campus in 1961.

Julian Mann III, a former Cumberland classmate, ranked Carroll among the school's most influential leaders, including its founder Abraham Caruthers, and early professor Nathan Green Sr.

"With the possible exceptions of (Green and Caruthers), Judge John Carroll is the Cumberland lawyer to have contributed the most to the academic success and prestige of the law school," said Mann, Cumberland's national alumni president and chief administrative law judge of the North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings.

New breed

Carroll grew up in the nation's capital and graduated from Tufts University near Boston before serving in the Vietnam War.

Arriving at Cumberland in 1971 riding a motorcycle, he represented a new breed of student.

"The law school brought to campus people the university had never seen before," Carroll said in a recent interview.

"Our student population was older, from a geographically wider area and with a different political persuasion," he said. "These two entities with nothing in common have come together and grown together."

As a student, he was a member of the Cumberland Law Review, served on the national moot court team and was student bar president.

After graduating, Carroll earned a Master of Laws degree at Harvard University. He became legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, handling civil rights class-action litigation and defending in capital murder and other complex criminal cases.

Carroll taught law at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., then served more than 14 years as U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of Alabama.

Over the last 11 years, Carroll has built strong bonds among students and staff, while also solidifying Cumberland's relationship with Samford University, said Howard Walthall, a Cumberland professor since 1975.

"He has connected the law school with its base of alumni and with the bar in the state and the region in a way none of the previous leaders of this school have been able to do," Walthall said.

Carroll has solicited major gifts for courtroom renovations, professional chairs and scholarships at the law school, and expanded its emphasis on public service and global awareness, said James N. Lewis Jr., retired vice dean.

Carroll said his longevity at the law school helm is unusual.

"The average tenure of a law school dean is less than five years," he said in the statement. "There are currently only 17 law school deans in the country out of the almost 200 who have been serving longer than I have."

Carroll said he leaves Cumberland well-positioned for the future.

"I have been honored and privileged to be Cumberland's dean," he said in the statement. "I look forward to joining what I consider to be the finest law school in the country and to continue serving Cumberland for many years to come."